Mind may not memorise the melody of the song, but its lyrical lines stick to the heart palpitating it forever. For the lines carry a quiet music that the heart can only pine for: “Lie just once you love me and let me live a couple of days or more, merely wave your hand to fake calling me and make me follow the road a little further.”
With tens and thousands of such heart-throbbing lines surrounding his song-lyrics, Arun Mantri is the uncrowned emperor of his fandom composed of lakhs of such songs.
Elements that make up the phrases of his mellifluous stanzas are the idyllic images of his village and what all his village held to charm him as a child and teenage boy -- smiling morning sun, mustard fields wearing a drape of yellow and ochre, perfume of mango flowers and swinging prop roots of ancient banyan trees, muddy roads and deep narrow lanes, ponds putting on lily-printed frocks and spells of occasional drizzle. He binds them all with the paste pouring from his purple heart.
Born to Jagabandhu and Ranjita Mantri in village Manijanga in Jagatsinghpur district, he has an enormously varied repertory of over two hundred film songs, same numbers of Jatra songs and more than fifteen hundred album verses to his credit.
Bagging State awards for twice, in 2011 for the film ‘Kebe Tume Nanh, Kebe Mun Nanhi’, and in 2017 for ‘Tu Mo Love Story’; he has also been honoured by several other platforms. Mantri spoke to Sugyan Choudhury about the exquisite process of composing lyrics.
How do you paint the subtle creative process that underlies the art of writing song-lyrics?
I think I am at my best when it comes to infusing romantic and melancholy vibes into my words. I love to chase after my wild imagination and to be tamely trapped by my blind impulses. It is in the sad and love stories where I explore a wide arena to do so. They purely demand the involvement of my whole heart and it is here I think I belong to. Besides, moulding them into lyrics makes me more literary. But the item songs offer me little scope for freely wandering inside my heart. And I can’t escape the hardest part of the creative process that invariably arises when I sit down to stitch together the syllables of a sequence song, especially for Jatras. I have devised my method of dealing with them. First, I make myself familiar with what, who, where, when, how of the sequence and for the time and locations shift suddenly in every next stanza with change of the personae. Indeed, all these exercises make my job easier when I compose such lines for cinemas.
What makes you stand apart from your peers in this profession?
The flower plant that I have reared in my yard is dazzlingly in bloom now. They are of variety and colours. I run short of time in selecting and plucking the loveliest of them to offer to my God of muse. Why should I sneak into my neighbour’s garden to steal? I hate plagiarising and never indulge in jugglery with words like blending foreign words into my lines in order to earn instant popularity.
All the popular songs may hold fascination for audience temporarily, but in the long run they wither away. I never let myself being swept away with the current trend nor do I like to be typecast.
I change my concept in my every other composition in rhyme with the mindset of the audience. I get married those concepts with common speech. Then I imbue them all with the overflowing emotions.
‘I live on this side, you on other, in between flows Alaka river; how can I say how much I love you while no boat is here?’ It sounds so when the refrain of one of my verse is rendered into English. Have you heard its original Odia version?
How did you stumble on this spellbinding art of song writing?
I fell in love with the cadence of songs early in my childhood when I accompanied my father, a stage director, to watch song-dramas enacted in my village and those around ours. I was also an avid listener of those streamed on radio. They all conspired to create an urge in me. As I discovered that I can’t sing, I took up pen and started scribbling poems while still in school.
I always won in quiz competitions, but never in poem writing. And to my wonder one day I found all my poems are coming out with rhymes. After that, I have never looked back. I can’t express the joy the day one of my poems was broadcast in the AIR’s youth programme, Yubavani.
Then when I heard my devotional composition in sweet and serene voice of legendary Bhikari Bal on the score composed by Saroj Nanda, I changed my decision of joining as a computer software engineer to be a full time songwriter. Goddess Sarala is my inspiration and the aroma of sacred soil of my village instils the urge into me.
Would you share your experience in this uncertain corona time when all recording studios have been shut down?
The music scene around here is always up and alive. Of course, it goes through ebb times, but they are infrequent and transient. The shadow of the pandemic definitely looms large over the music world. But the creative urge can never be eclipsed. It is a perennial flow that can never be stopped. I as usual continue to compose whenever I feel like doing it although it is not reaching out to the listeners. I have penned a number of lyrics on the theme of pandemic to create public awareness. I have been commissioned to write for Municipal Corporation too.
Can one survive, making song writing his fulltime profession?
Why not? I am its role model. I did my Computer Science. Instead, I opted to be a lyricist. I never regret what I did. Anybody intending to enter this magical world of juggling with words and emotions need to be resolute to harvest success.